Books by Clinton Machann

Lawrence H. Konecny and Clinton Machann take readers beyond the bare facts to the human stories of immigration from the point of view of English and Czech immigrants whose tales provide fascinating counterpoints to each other and to the glowing claims about Texas made in William Kingsbury’s pamphlet. Perilous Voyages combines the original text of Kingsbury’s 1877 pamphlet, a private diary kept by an Englishman named William Wright, and oral histories by descendants of Moravian immigrants to allow modern readers to experience some of the lure that brought people to the state in earlier days.

The first part of the book includes a complete reprint of Kingsbury’s pamphlet, today a rare document, giving insight into the historical context and rhetoric of Texas immigration. The realities faced by the early settlers stand in sharp relief to Kingsbury’s sometimes extravagant claims. In the second part, the experiences of the immigrants themselves are illuminated through Wright’s private diary. His 1879 journey began with a shipwreck off the coast of Spain, but, undaunted, he continued in another ship and eventually was able to record his first–hand impressions of the land and people of Texas. The third section of the book narrates the story of a group of thirty-six men, women, and children that left their rural Moravian homeland in 1873 to pursue dreams of prosperity and the good life in Texas. Their ship ran aground in the Bahamas, and they were left to ride out a terrible hurricane before continuing to Galveston and, finally, to the peaceful farmlands of central Texas.

The experiences of the English and Czech immigrants are vividly recounted here; the two stories share hopes and perils, hardships and enthusiasms. Kingsbury’s pamphlet gives insight into the sparsely settled region and the dreams that led not only to the cultivation of the land but eventually to the cities that now rise from once-barren plains of Texas.

Katherine Anne Porter, best known for her novel Ship of Fools, was an inveterate traveler—a cosmopolitan jet-setter in the days before jets. But she was of humble origins, born in 1890 in the tiny hamlet of Indian Creek, Texas, and christened Callie Russell Porter. For most of her life she maintained a stormy relationship with her home state. That relationship is documented in a book published by Texas A&M University Press in 1990, the centennial of the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer’s birth.

Edited by Clinton Machann and William Bedford Clark, Katherine Anne Porter and Texas: An Uneasy Relationship reveals the sources of Porter’s love-hate relationship with Texas. In 1939 the Texas Institute of Letters conferred an award on J. Frank Dobie’s adventure saga, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver, rather than on Porter’s acclaimed short-story collection, Pale Horse, Pale Rider. The favoring of the male-interest, West Texas story over Porter’s finely crafted stories, with their female characters and some non-Texas settings, could not have helped Texas’ literary reputation. Twenty years later a misunderstanding occurred when Porter thought the University of Texas intended to name a new library after her. As a result of the misunderstanding, she bequeathed her papers and memorabilia to the University of Maryland rather than the University of Texas.

Katherine Anne Porter and Texas begins with an introduction by noted folklorist Sylvia Ann Grider. Part I contains the personal recollections of three individuals who knew Porter from very different perspectives. Willene Hendrick became “acquainted” with Porter by trying to piece together the puzzle of her early life. Cleanth Brooks, the distinguished critic of Southern literature, contributes a cache of fascinating letters received from Porter over the years. Finally, Paul Porter relates in hilarious detail his memories of rambunctious Aunt Katherine, telling, for example, of her samurai-like attempts to carve a leg of lamb at a fancy dinner party.

In addition to these entertaining chapters, essays by Joan Givner, Don Graham, Thomas F. Walsh, Janis P. Stout, and Darlene Harbour Unrue search out the Texas imprint on Porter’s fiction. Sally Dee Wade contributes an extensive, annotated bibliography of letters, articles, and other writings by or about Porter, all of which document the “Texas connection” that the cosmopolitan Porter vigorously denied. This bibliography includes description of the correspondence between her and University of Texas officials that sealed her estrangement from Texas.

Texas A&M University Press has released a paperback edition of Czech Voices: Stories from Texas in the Amerikán národní kalendá. Originally published in 1991, Czech Voices comprises ten short memoir-essays written by some of the earliest Czech immigrants to Texas. Translated and edited by Clinton Machann and James W. Mendl, Jr., Czech Voices offers a clear window to the lives of Czech immigrants on a difficult frontier.

Each of the ten autobiographical sketches had been published in the Amerikán národní kalendá (a Czech-language magazine in Chicago. (That publication’s founding by a freethinking political group explains the fact that many of the essays it published expressed some negative attitudes toward organized religion.)

Several motifs and themes that run through the collection loom especially large: hardships of the immigrants, religious conflicts, the American Civil War, ethnic identity, farming practices, and attitudes toward the land. Among the writers are important leaders, adventurers, journalists, and typical farmers, chosen for their identity or powers of expression or for the importance of the events they record. Their impressions, attitudes, and emotions bring to life an era that other sources rarely can.

Clinton Machann and James W. Mendl, Jr., who selected and translated these stories, provide an interpretive introduction, informative notes, and a bibliography that help to place the life stories in their historical and cultural context. These narratives had never before been generally available; historians interested in American immigration and ethnicity, as well as the descendants of immigrants, will appreciate both their valuable contribution and the pleasure of reading them.